Karakterizacija i dobivanje proteina modifikacijom nusprodukta meljave riže pomoću proteaza

Broken rice is an underutilized by-product of milling. Proteins prepared from broken rice by treatments with alkaline protease and papain have been characterized with regard to nutritional and functional properties. The protein content and the protein recovery were 56.45 and 75.45 % for alkaline protease treatment, and 65.45 and 46.32 % for papain treatment, respectively. Protease treatment increased the lysine and valine content, leading to a more balanced amino acid profile. Broken rice proteins had high emulsifying capacity, 58.3–71.6 % at neutral pH, and adequate water holding capacity, ranging from 1.96 to 2.93 g/g of proteins. At pH=7.0, the broken rice protein had the highest water holding capacity and the best interfacial activities (emulsifying capacity, emulsifying stability, foaming capacity and foaming stability), which may be the result of the higher solubility at pH=7.0. The interfacial activities increased with the increase in the mass fraction of broken rice proteins. The proteins prepared by the papain treatment had higher water holding capacity (p>0.05), emulsifying capacity (p0.05) than alkaline protease treatment at the same pH or mass fraction. To test the fortification of food products with broken rice proteins, pork sausages containing the proteins were prepared. Higher yield of the sausages was obtained with the increased content of broken rice proteins, in the range of 2.0–9.0 %. The results indicate that broken rice proteins have potential to be used as the protein fortification ingredient for food products.Nusprodukt meljave riže slabo se iskorištava, pa su stoga pomoću alkalne proteaze i papaina iz njega izdvojeni proteini te određena njihova hranjiva i funkcionalna svojstva. Djelovanjem alkalne proteaze dobiven je udio proteina od 56,45 % pri iskorištenju od 75,45 %, a pomoću papaina udio proteina od 65,45 % uz iskorištenje od 46,32 %. Obrada je proteazom povećala udio lizina i valina te uravnotežila profil aminokiselina. Proteini izdvojeni nakon meljave riže imali su bolja emulgatorska svojstva (58,3-71,6 % pri neutralnoj pH-vrijednosti) i dobru sposobnost vezanja vode (1,96-2,93 g/g proteina). Pri pH=7 dobiveni su proteini, osim najvećeg kapaciteta vezanja, vode imali i najbolja emulgatorska svojstva, najveću stabilnost emulzije, sposobnost stvaranja pjene te njezinu stabilnost, što može biti posljedica veće topljivosti pri toj pH-vrijednosti. Ta su se svojstva poboljšavala s povećanjem masenog udjela proteina. Proteini dobiveni pomoću papaina imali su veću sposobnost vezanja vode (p>0,05), bolja emulgatorska svojstva (p0,05) od proteina dobivenih pomoću alkalne proteaze pri istoj pH-vrijednosti i masenom udjelu. Da bi se ispitala mogućnost obogaćivanja hrane proteinima izdvojenim iz nusprodukta meljave riže, pripremljene su svinjske kobasice, čiji je prinos povećan s povećanjem udjela proteina od 2 do 9 %. Rezultati pokazuju da se tako izdvojeni proteini mogu upotrijebiti za obogaćivanje prehrambenih proizvoda

Using Active Learning Spaces to Support Flipped Classroom

[EN] Flipped Classroom, an emerging type of blended instruction, has become a popular pedagogical approach in the recent years. Active learning classroom spaces have been implemented in many university campuses to facilitate student-centered, collaborative learning environment. The purpose of this study is to examine the effectiveness of a college level flipped classroom conducted in an active learning classroom space as compared to its traditional face-to-face counterpart. Two sections of a business course taught by the same instructor during one semester were selected for the study. The two sections had the exact same coverage and evaluation policy while one is a flipped class conducted in an active learning classroom space and the other is a traditional face-to-face class. We conducted both quantitative and qualitative analyses and our results reveal that there is no statistically significant difference of students’ performance between the two classes. However, students reported a more positive learning experience in the flipped classroom setting.Li, R.; Zhu, L.; Singh, J.; Mo, Y. (2019). Using Active Learning Spaces to Support Flipped Classroom. En HEAD'19. 5th International Conference on Higher Education Advances. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 223-232. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAD19.2019.9243OCS22323

Efficacy of different approaches of spinal endoscopy in the treatment of L 4-5 intervertebral disc herniation

Objective To compare the clinical efficacy of two approaches under spinal endoscopy in the treatment of L 4-5 intervertebral disc herniation. Methods A retrospective analysis was performed for 148 patients with L 4-5 intervertebral disc herniation treated in The Affiliated Huai'an No.1 People's Hospital of Nanjing Medical University from January 2020 to June 2023. Among them, 68 cases were treated with percutaneous endoscopic transforaminal discectomy (PETD group), and 80 cases were treated with percutaneous endoscopic interlaminar discectomy (PEID group). Surgical time, intraoperative fluoroscopy frequency, intraoperative bleeding volume, postoperative hospital stay, and clinical efficacy were compared between two groups. Preoperative and postoperative lumbar Oswestry dysfunction index (ODI), VAS score for lower back and leg pain were compared. Results Patients in both groups were followed up for 6-36 months, with an average of 21.6 month. The surgical time, intraoperative bleeding volume, postoperative hospital stay, and intraoperative fluoroscopy in the PEID group were significantly lower than those in the PETD group (P＜0.05). The VAS scores of lower back and leg pain and ODI scores in the two groups at the first day, one month, three months and the last follow-up after operation were improved compared with those before operation (P＜0.05), but there was no significant difference between the two groups (P＞0.05). There was no significant difference in the excellent and good rate between the PETD group and PEID group (95.6% vs 93.8%, χ2=0.016, P=0.898). Conclusion Both approaches under spinal endoscopy can effectively treat L 4-5 intervertebral disc herniation, but the PEID group has shorter operation time and fewer fluoroscopic times, which can effectively shorten the operation time and anesthesia time

Perioperative nutritional risk and its influencing factors in patients with oral cancer: a longitudinal study

IntroductionWe aimed to investigate the nutritional risk status and dynamic changes in patients with perioperative oral cancer at different stages and analyze the factors influencing nutritional risk and the correlation among body mass index, nutrition-related symptoms, and nutritional risk.MethodsIn total, 198 patients with oral cancer who were hospitalized in the Head & Neck Surgery Departments of a tertiary cancer hospital in Hunan Province, China, from May 2020 to January 2021, were selected as participants. The Nutritional Risk Screening 2002 scale and Head and Neck Patient Symptom Checklist were used to assess patients on admission day, 7 days post-surgery, and 1 month post-discharge. Multivariate analysis of variance, paired t-test, and generalized estimating equation were used to analyze the trajectory and influencing factors of nutritional risk in patients with perioperative oral cancer. Spearman’s correlation analysis was used to explore the correlation among body mass index, symptoms, and nutritional risk.ResultsThe nutritional risk scores of patients with oral cancer at the three time points were 2.30 ± 0.84, 3.21 ± 0.94, and 2.11 ± 0.84, respectively, and the differences were significant (p < 0.05). The incidences of nutritional risk were 30.3, 52.5, and 37.9%, respectively. The factors influencing nutritional risk included education level, smoking status, clinical stage, flap repair, and tracheotomy (β = −0.326, 0.386, 0.387, 0.336, and 0.240, respectively, p < 0.05). Nutritional risk was negatively correlated with body mass index (rs = −0.455, p < 0.01) and positively correlated with pain, loss of appetite, sore mouth, bothersome smells, swallowing difficulty, taste changes, depression, chewing difficulty, thick saliva, and anxiety (rs = 0.252, 0.179, 0.269, 0.155, 0.252, 0.212, 0.244, 0.384, 0.260, and 0.157, respectively, p < 0.05).ConclusionThe incidence of nutritional risk in patients with perioperative oral cancer was high, and the trajectory of nutritional risk changed over time. Strengthening the nutritional monitoring and management of postoperative patients or those with low education level, advanced-stage cancer, flap repair, tracheotomy, and low body mass index; strengthening tobacco control management; and controlling nutrition-related discomfort symptoms in perioperative oral cancer patients are necessary

Molecular Etiology of Hearing Impairment in Inner Mongolia: mutations in SLC26A4 gene and relevant phenotype analysis

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The molecular etiology of hearing impairment in Chinese has not been thoroughly investigated. Study of <it>GJB2 </it>gene revealed that 30.4% of the patients with hearing loss in Inner Mongolia carried <it>GJB2 </it>mutations. The <it>SLC26A4 </it>gene mutations and relevant phenotype are analyzed in this study.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>One hundred and thirty-five deaf patients were included. The coding exons of <it>SLC26A4 </it>gene were sequence analyzed in 111 patients, not including 22 patients carrying bi-allelic <it>GJB2 </it>mutations or one patient carrying a known <it>GJB2 </it>dominant mutation as well as one patient with <it>mtDNA </it>1555A>G mutation. All patients with <it>SLC26A4 </it>mutations or variants were subjected to high resolution temporal bone CT scan and those with confirmed enlarged vestibular aqueduct and/or other inner ear malformation were then given further ultrasound scan of thyroid and thyroid hormone assays.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Twenty-six patients (19.26%, 26/135) were found carrying <it>SLC26A4 </it>mutation. Among them, 17 patients with bi-allelic <it>SLC26A4 </it>mutations were all confirmed to have EVA or other inner ear malformation by CT scan. Nine patients were heterozygous for one <it>SLC26A4 </it>mutation, including 3 confirmed to be EVA or EVA and Mondini dysplasia by CT scan. The most common mutation, IVS7-2A>G, accounted for 58.14% (25/43) of all <it>SLC26A4 </it>mutant alleles. The shape and function of thyroid were confirmed to be normal by thyroid ultrasound scan and thyroid hormone assays in 19 of the 20 patients with EVA or other inner ear malformation except one who had cystoid change in the right side of thyroid. No Pendred syndrome was diagnosed.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>In Inner Mongolia, China, mutations in <it>SLC26A4 </it>gene account for about 12.6% (17/135) of the patients with hearing loss. Together with <it>GJB2 </it>(23/135), <it>SLC26A4 </it>are the two most commonly mutated genes causing deafness in this region. Pendred syndrome is not detected in this deaf population. We established a new strategy that detects <it>SLC26A4 </it>mutations prior to the temporal bone CT scan to find EVA and inner ear malformation patients. This model has a unique advantage in epidemiologic study of large deaf population.</p

Skywork: A More Open Bilingual Foundation Model

In this technical report, we present Skywork-13B, a family of large language models (LLMs) trained on a corpus of over 3.2 trillion tokens drawn from both English and Chinese texts. This bilingual foundation model is the most extensively trained and openly published LLMs of comparable size to date. We introduce a two-stage training methodology using a segmented corpus, targeting general purpose training and then domain-specific enhancement training, respectively. We show that our model not only excels on popular benchmarks, but also achieves \emph{state of the art} performance in Chinese language modeling on diverse domains. Furthermore, we propose a novel leakage detection method, demonstrating that test data contamination is a pressing issue warranting further investigation by the LLM community. To spur future research, we release Skywork-13B along with checkpoints obtained during intermediate stages of the training process. We are also releasing part of our SkyPile corpus, a collection of over 150 billion tokens of web text, which is the largest high quality open Chinese pre-training corpus to date. We hope Skywork-13B and our open corpus will serve as a valuable open-source resource to democratize access to high-quality LLMs

Multiple sex partner behavior in female undergraduate students in China: A multi-campus survey

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>China is realizing increases in women engaged in premarital sex and multiple sex partner behavior. Our aim was to examine prevalence and determinants of multiple sex partner behavior among female undergraduates in China.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Anonymously completed questionnaires were received from 4,769 unmarried female undergraduates, recruited using randomized cluster sampling by type of university and students' major and grade. Items captured demographic, family, peer and work influence, and student factors (major, academic performance, and sex-related knowledge and attitudes). To examine risk factors for sexual behaviors, we used multi-level logistic regression, yielding odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Of 4,769 female students, 863 (18.10%) reported ever having sexual intercourse, and 5.31% reported having multiple sex partners (29.32% of all women having sexual intercourse). Several demographic, family, peer and work influences, and student factors (including major, performance, knowledge, and attitude toward sex) were risk factors for ever having sex. However, risk factors for multiple sex partners only included working in a place of entertainment, having current close friends that were living with boyfriends, poor academic performance, and positive attitudes toward multiple partners. These women also were more likely to practice masturbation, start having sex at a younger age, have sex with married men and/or men not their "boyfriends" at first coitus, and not use condoms consistently.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>A small but important subset of Chinese female undergraduates is engaged in unprotected sex with multiple sex partners. Interventions need to target at risk women, stressing the importance of consistent condom use.</p

GJB2 mutation spectrum in 2063 Chinese patients with nonsyndromic hearing impairment

Background: Mutations in GJB2 are the most common molecular defects responsible for autosomal recessive nonsyndromic hearing impairment (NSHI). The mutation spectra of this gene vary among different ethnic groups. Methods: In order to understand the spectrum and frequency of GJB2 mutations in the Chinese population, the coding region of the GJB2 gene from 2063 unrelated patients with NSHI was PCR amplified and sequenced. Results: A total of 23 pathogenic mutations were identified. Among them, five (p.W3X, c.99delT, c.155_c.158delTCTG, c.512_c.513insAACG, and p.Y152X) are novel. Three hundred and seven patients carry two confirmed pathogenic mutations, including 178 homozygotes and 129 compound heterozygotes. One hundred twenty five patients carry only one mutant allele. Thus, GJB2 mutations account for 17.9% of the mutant alleles in 2063 NSHI patients. Overall, 92.6% (684/739) of the pathogenic mutations are frame-shift truncation or nonsense mutations. The four prevalent mutations; c.235delC, c.299_c.300delAT, c.176_c.191del16, and c.35delG, account for 88.0% of all mutantalleles identified. The frequency of GJB2 mutations (alleles) varies from 4% to 30.4% among different regions of China. It also varies among different sub-ethnic groups. Conclusion: In some regions of China, testing of the three most common mutations can identify at least one GJB2 mutant allele in all patients. In other regions such as Tibet, the three most common mutations account for only 16% the GJB2 mutant alleles. Thus, in this region, sequencing of GJB2 would be recommended. In addition, the etiology of more than 80% of the mutant alleles for NSHI in China remains to be identified. Analysis of other NSHI related genes will be necessary